"Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, ease after war, death after life does greatly please."
"It is the mind that maketh good or ill, that maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor."
"Ay me, how many perils doe enfold The righteous man, to make him daily fall!"
- Faerie Queene. Book i. Canto viii. St. 1.
"I was promised on a time, To have reason for my rhyme; From that time unto this season, I received nor rhyme nor reason."
- Lines on His Promised Pensions
"The poets' scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by death."
"He that strives to touch the stars oft stumbles at a straw."
"Lo, how finely the Graces can it foot To the instrument! They dancen deffly and singen soote, In their merriment. Wants not a fourth Grace to make the dance even? Let that room to my Lady be yeven. She shall be a Grace, To fill the fourth place, And reign with the rest in heaven."
"Her face so fair, as flesh it seemëd not, But heavenly portrait of bright angel's hue, Clear as the sky, withouten blame or blot, Through goodly mixture of complexions due; And in her cheek the vermeil red did shew Like roses in a bed of lilies shed, The which ambrosial odours from them threw And gazers' sense with double pleasure fed, Able to heal the sick and to revive the dead."
